Benin — National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers Union (NUPENG), Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) branch, have issued a 21-day ultimatum to the Federal Government to rescind its decision to appoint a pre-shipment inspector or risk industrial action.

Recently, the Federal Government appointed Cobalt International Services Limited, as pre-shipment inspector for the nation's 21 crude oil export terminals.

As a fall-out of the Federal Government's appointment of Cobalt as pre-shipment inspectors, the two unions, in a communiqué issued in Benin at the end of a two-day joint meeting of executive council of NUPENG and PENGASSAN, DPR branch, said the move amounts to selling Nigeria's interest to a foreign firm.

According to the communiqué, the two in-house unions said appointment of pre-shipment inspectors by the Federal Government was unacceptable, as it amount to colossal economic waste to the country, as pre-shipment inspection function was already being statutorily performed by DPR.

In the communiqué, signed by various branch chairmen and other officials of NUPENG and PENGASSAN, the two unions said statistics at their disposal shows that the 0.1 per cent on Freight on Board (FOB) allocated to the pre-shipment inspectors amount to 1,900 barrels of crude oil per day, based on the nation's daily crude oil export of 1.9 million barrels per day.

"This in monetary terms, shows that Nigeria will lose $87,400 daily based on the present market price of $46 per barrel. One can now wonder what the country will lose in a year with an increase in the price of crude oil," the two unions noted.

They argued that appointing a foreign firm as pre-shipment inspectors to the nation's 21 crude oil export terminals amounted to mortgaging the nation's economic heartbeat and security to foreigners.

The two oil and gas unions recalled that it was the same consequences that made late General Sani Abacha's regime to withdraw the proposal on pre-shipment inspection in 1995, the union pointed out that as responsible unions, they could not fold their arms and watch the all important sector of the nation's economy ravaged at this point in the nation's history.